Machine for handling sheet glass

ABSTRACT

A machine for handling glass sheets by means of suction cups and provided with means facilitating removal of the sheets one by one from a pack by displacing the outermost sheet a short distance in its own plane, tilting it so that one edge thereof is detached from the surface of the next sheet while holding back said next sheet at said edge, and blowing in air behind the detached edge, thereby making possible a rapid withdrawal of sheet from the pack.

United States Patent Nilsson [4 1 Sept. 12, 1972 [54] MACHINE FOR HANDLING SHEET FOREIGN PATENTS OR APPLICATIONS GLASS 934,463 8/1963 Great Britain ..214/s.s D [72] Inventor: Leif Billy Nilsson, Emmaboda,

S d Primary Examiner-Gerald M. Forlenza Assistant Examiner-George F. Abraham [73] Assignee: AB Emmaboda Glaswerk, Em- Attorney Beveridge & Decrandi maboda, Sweden 22 F] d: 21 1971 1 l e E 57 ABSTRACT I N 4 [2 1 Appl o A machine for handling glass sheets by means of suction cups and provided with means facilitating [30] Foreign Application Priority Data removal of the sheets one by one from a pack by displacing the outermost sheet a short distance in its own June 22, 1970 Sweden ..8550/70 plane tilting it so that one edge thereof is detached from the surface of the next sheet while holding back [52] US. Cl. ..2l4/8.5 B, 2l4/8.5 D, 271/5, said next sheet at said edge, and blowing in behind 271,26 S the detached edge, thereby making possible a rapid [51] Int. Cl. ..B65g 59/04 withdrawal f sheet from the pack [58] Field of Search ..2l4/8.5 D, 8.5 E, 8.5 B;

271/5, 26 R, 26 S, 74 R [56] References Cited 4 Claims, 4 Drawing Figures UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,049,850 8/1936 Lytle .t ..2l4/8.5 D X \IBa 17 2 4 I6 9 8 ,7 5 p l;

\ J I 28 42 L E z I 180 3 I 24a momma 12 m2 sum 3 IE 4 MACmE FOR LING SHEET GLASS As is well-known, it is often diflicult to separate a pair of planar sheets having smooth surfaces and in direct contact with one another, and where sheet glass is concerned, which must be handled with care, the above-mentioned procedure will be extremely troublesome and time-consuming if it is carried out by hand.

The glass industry often employs handling machines equipped with suction cups which adhere to the glass sheet and are capable of liftingand carrying it. However, also prior art machines of this type have been unable to cope with the removal of individual glass sheets, as it easily happens that additional sheets or perhaps the entire pack is carried along when the suction cups exert a pull on the sheet to which they adhere, especially if the pack stands on edge and the removal is effected horizontally.

The present invention has for its object to improve a machine of the above-mentioned pneumatic type which has a suction headmovably mounted on a slide for movement towards and away from the pack of glass sheets, to enable it to detach individual glass sheets at high speed and without mishap.

The invention will now be described in more detail, reference being bad to the accompanying, simplified and partly diagrammatic drawings in which:

FIG. 1 is a plan view of the entire machine and certain accessories;

FIG. 2 is a front view of the machine, partly in section along line II-l1 of FIG. 1',

FIG. 3 is an end view partly in section along line III III of FIG. 2;

FIG. 4 shows, on a larger scale, part of FIG. 3 with one suction head in a different position than in FIG. 3.

The machine comprises a frame 1, the major part of which is normally encased with sheet metal but which in its upper part is open in the front side of the machine illustrated in FIG. 2. The upper part of the frame, inside the front opening, carries two tracks, one upper track 2 and one lower track 3, each comprising two horizontal bars parallel to the front side of the frame. Two carriages 4,5 are guided, by means of bearings surrounding said bars, on each of said tracks and connected with a common drive for back and forth synchronous movement in opposite directions so that they will simultaneously be positioned each at one end of the machine,

one carriage at a pick-up station shown to the right in FIGS. 1 and 2 and the other at a delivery station. The drive comprises a pneumatic piston and cylinder device 6 and a two-step chain transmission 7, the carriages being coupled each to one run of an endless chain 8.

Each carriage carries a slide 9, 10 in the form of a rectangular frame comprising a pair of parallel bars 11 perpendicular to the carriage track and fixedly interconnected by means of front and rear transverse beams 12 and 13, respectively. The bars 11 are movably guided in surrounding bearings on the carriage, and the rear transverse beam 13 is connected with a pneumatic piston and cylinder device or rather the piston rod 14 thereof, while the cylinder 15 of said device is mounted on the carriage.

On the front transverse beam 12 each slide carries a suction head consisting substantially of a shaft 16 rotatably mounted in a pair of blocks 17 located at the ends of the transverse beam 12, and at least three (four in the illustrated embodiment) suction cups 18, 18a mounted on pipes detachably mounted on the shaft 16 and connected to a suction line through hoses (not shown). As shown in the drawing, the three suction cups 18 of each suction head are located on a straight horizontal line, and the fourth suction cup 18a is located at a distance above this line on the upper suction head and at a distance below said line on the lower suction head. Furthermore, the bearings of the shaft 16 of either slide are so mounted on the blocks 17 that they can be raised and lowered by a pair of pneumatic piston and cylinder devices 19 mounted on said transverse beam 12 each adjacent one of the blocks 17. The piston rod of each device 19 is coupled to one arm of a bell crank lever 20 secured to the shaft 16, the other arm of said bell crank lever being provided with a laterally extending pin 21 which is guided in a slot 22 in a plate 23 secured on said block 17. The slot is curved so that the lifting movement towards its end is combined with a rotationof the shaft 16 and thus a tilting movement of the entire suction head, whereby the single suction cup 18a of the lower suction head will be retracted and that of the upper suction head will be advanced relative to the remaining cups. The lifting movement amounts to but a few centimeters, and the tilting movement to a few degrees.

These movements of the suction head are intended to free a glass sheet 24 (FIG. 4) adhering to the suction head from a glass pack 25 standing on edge on a pair of beams or arms 27 and inclined against a support 28 on a carriage 26 placed in front of the pick-up station and locked in position. To facilitate this release so that the machine, through movement of the slide 9 or 10, can quickly detach the glass sheet from the pack, the machine is provided at its lower front side with a pair of blowing nozzles 30 formed by the mouth of a pair of pipes 31 connected to the compressed air system of the machine and adapted, in connection with the above described tilting of the suction head, to produce an air stream of short duration, about one second, passing upwardly behind the adhering glass sheet 24, the lower edge of which has been raised above the nozzles and has lost its contact with the next glass sheet in the pack through the above described lifting and tilting movement of the suction head.

The compressed air pipes 31 are mounted on a holder in the form of a horizontal plate 32 which is carried by a slide bar 33 in a fixed guide 34 and is biased, through said slide bar, by a force directed against said glass pack and exerted by a pneumatic piston and cylinder device 35, the cylinder of which is secured to the guide 34. The plate 32 is provided at its front edge with a pair of abutrnents 36 limiting the advance of said plate by being brought into engagement with the glass pack at the lower edge thereof with the nozzles 30 adjacent said edge.

In the embodiment shown, thevmachine has for its object to pick up glass sheets one by one from the glass pack 25 at the pick-up station and to carry them to the delivery station at the other end of the machine where they are packed in a crate 40 (FIG. 1) placed on a carriage similar to the carriage 26 at the pick-up station.

With one or the other carriage 4, 5 at the pick-up station, its slide 9 is pushed forward by the pneumatic device 14, so that the suction cups 18, 18a are engaged with the outermost glass sheet 24 of the pack 25, the suction cups being placed under vacuum so that they can now firmly hold the glass sheet. Directly the vacuum has been established, the suction head is caused by the devices 19 to carry out its lifting and tilting movement. Lifting of the adhering glass sheets 24 permits the blowing nozzle holder, i.e., the plate 32, to advance and urge its abutments 36 against the next glass sheet of the pack, with the blowing nozzles 30 adjacent thereto, and immediately following the tilting movement of the suction head, whereby the lower edge of the adhering glass sheet is swung outwards a few mil-' limeters away from the next glass sheet, the blowing nozzles deliver a short compressed air blast upwardly behind the adhering glass sheet 24 which thus is completely detached from the glass pack and can be quickly withdrawn therefrom by the following rearward movement of the slide 9 or 10. This last mentioned movement is interrupted by separate stop means with the glass sheet in the position shown at 24a in FIG. 3, and the carriage, with the glass sheet on the suction head, then passes on to the delivery station where it again thrusts out the slide until the glass sheet is stopped in the crate 40, whereupon the vacuum of the suction cups is discontinued and, if desired, the suction cups are instead supplied with compressed air so that they will quickly release the glass sheet and can be retracted by withdrawing the slide, this time to a position, defined by an abutment, further back than at the pick-up station sothat its suction head can pass the suction head of the other carriage with a glass sheet carried thereby, when they meet midway between the stations.

Naturally, various driving systems are possible, and in the embodiment here described, the machine is operated entirely pneumatically, the entire sequence of movements being controlled by stop means, valves, throttle means and other conventional pneumatic system components, using a supply of compressed air for power, and the valves are controlled by abutments or feelers in known manner so that each movement, when terminated, initiates the next movement, and the machine thus operates automatically after it has been started by operating a main valve in the compressed air system and a further main valve in a vacuum system to which the suction cups are connected. These systems which are not shown in the drawings, do not in and per se constitute an invention and are not considered to require a complete description since their construction is more or less a matter of routine to a pneumatics expert on the basis of the specified movement pattern.

When glass sheets are to be packed for transport or storage, it is necessary to provide them with interleaving means since a direct contact between the glass sheets may cause damage to their surfaces unless they are completely dry, and this is seldom the case. Paper is the conventional interleaving means, and the above described machine is equipped with a device placing paper over each glass sheet which is put into the crate 40 This device consists substantially of a shaft 41 for a paper roll 42, said shaft being removably suspended on an arm 43 secured to the upper carriage 4 of the machine, and having the same inclination as the glass sheets in the crate 40 as well as such a position that it passes the crate 40 every time the carriage 4 is moved from one station to the other. The paper roll is pushed onto the shaft and is then carried by a head 44 at the lower end thereof. When packaging is begun, the paper withdrawn from the roll is held by hand to the crate 40, and then a length of paper 41a (FIG. 1) is rolled out over the crate opening each time a glass sheet is carried to the crate by one or the other carriage 4, 5.

Because of the high operational speed of the machine, the roll will rotate very quickly during each operation. It must therefore be braked, and FIG. 2 shows a device for this purpose. The device comprises an abutment arm 45 swingably mounted on a fixed post 46 and spring loaded (at 47) to be held against the paper roll. Furthermore, a brake arm 48 having a brake I shoe 49 is swingably mounted on the head 44 and,

when engaging the arm 45, moves the brake shoe into contact with the paper roll and brakes it so that not too much paper is rolled out prematurely.

As has already been indicated, the scope of this invention is not restricted to the embodiment illustrated and described above, which can be modified in many different ways. For example, the machine can be built for handling the glass sheets in horizontal position,.and the operating mechanisms can be replaced by others. However, a pneumatic operation would seem preferable, on one hand because it offers excellent possibilities of smoothly accelerating and decelerating movements which are not positive but can be stopped by abutments without any risk of overloading and, on the other hand, because the machine, irrespective of its driving system, must have a pneumatic equipment for the suction cups and the blowing nozzles.

What I claim and desire to secure by Letters Patent l. A machine for moving glass sheets one by one from a pack of glass sheets at a pick-up station to a delivery station, comprising a frame (1), a track (2) on said frame, extending between said pick-up station and said delivery station, a carriage (4) on said track movable therealong, a slide (10) on said carriage movable in a direction perpendicular to said track, a suction head (16) movably mounted on said slide and having at least three suction cups (18, 18a) triangularly positioned on said suction head, means (1923) on said slide for moving said suction head relative to said slide in a direction substantially perpendicular to the direction of the slide to effect displacement of the outermost glass sheet of the pack, adhered to said suction cups, in its own plane, thereby uncovering a narrow marginal area of the next glass sheet of the pack at an edge of said outermost glass sheet, and for tilting said suction head about an axis parallel to the plane of the glass sheet and perpendicular to the direction of displacement to detach said edge of said outermost glass sheet from said next glass sheet, an abutment (36) movably mounted on said frame and biased to engage the outermost glass sheet at said edge and after said displacement to engage said marginal portion of said next glass sheet, and a blowing nozzle (30) attached to said abutment and positioned for blowing air in behind said edge of said outermost glass sheet after said displacing and tilting movements.

2. A machine as claimed in claim 1, comprising a pair of aligned bearings mounted on said slide for movement in said displacement direction, said suction head (16) being joumalled in said bearings, said means for moving and tilting said suction head consisting of a bell crank lever (20) secured to said suction head, an actuator (19) connected between said slide (12) and one arm of said bell crank lever, a guide pin (21) on one side of the other arm of said bell crank lever, and means on said slide forming a guide slot (22) for said guide pin, said slot being partly straight and partly curved for guiding said suction head in its displacing and tilting actions, respectively.

3. In a sheet glass handling machine, an apparatus for removing glass sheets one by one from a pack of glass sheets without interleaving means between the sheets, said apparatus comprising a suction head (16) movably mounted on a frame (1) and having at least three suction cups (18,18a) positioned triangularly in a common plane, means (9, for reciprocating said suction head towards and away from a glass sheet pack (25) to remove the glass sheets one by one adhered to its suction cups, means (19-23) for moving said suction head parallel to the glass sheet side plane and tilting it through a small angle, thereby displacing one adhered sheet (24) in its own plane and spacing one edge thereof from the next sheet of the pack, abutment means (36) movably mounted on said frame and biased for abutting the glass sheet pack at said edge, and air nozzle means (30) carried by said abutting means in position to expel a blast of compressed air between said edge and said next glass sheet.

4. In a machine having a movable suction head (16) for removing glass sheets one by one from a pack (25) positioned at the machine and consisting of glass sheets in direct contact with each other, means (19-23) for moving said suction head with the outermost glass sheet of said pack adhered thereto parallel to the main plane of said sheet, thereby displacing said sheet and uncovering an edge portion of the next sheet of said pack at one edge of said outermost sheet, and for tilting said suction head about an axis parallel with said main plane and at substantially right angles to the displacement direction, thereby detaching said edge of said outermost sheet from said next sheet, abutment means (36) movable and biased for pressing against said outermost sheet at said edge thereof and after the displacement of said outermost sheet against said uncovered portion of said next sheet, and a blowing nozzle (30) attached to said abutment means in position for blowing air in between said edge of said outermost sheet and said next sheet; 

1. A machine for moving glass sheets one by one from a pack of glass sheets at a pick-up station to a delivery station, comprising a frame (1), a track (2) on said frame, extending between said pick-up station and said delivery station, a carriage (4) on said track movable therealong, a slide (10) on said carriage movable in a direction perpendicular to said track, a suction head (16) movably mounted on said slide and having at least three suction cups (18, 18a) triangularly positioned on said suction head, means (19-23) on said slide for moving said suction head relative to said slide in a direction substantially perpendicular to the direction of the slide to effect displacement of the outermost glass sheet of the pack, adhered to said suction cups, in its own plane, thereby uncovering a narrow marginal area of the next glass sheet of the pack at an edge of said outermost glass sheet, and for tilting said suction head about an axis parallel to the plane of the glass sheet and perpendicular to the direction of displacement to detach said edge of said outermost glass sheet from said next glass sheet, an abutment (36) movably mounted on said frame and biased to engage the outermost glass sheet at said edge and - after said displacement - to engage said marginal portion of said next glass sheet, and a blowing nozzle (30) attached to said abutment and positioned for blowing air in behind said edge of said outermost glass sheet after said displacing and tilting movements.
 2. A machine as claimed in claim 1, comprising a pair of aligned bearings mounted on said slide (10) for movement in said displacement direction, said suction head (16) being journalled in said bearings, said means for moving and tilting said suction head consisting of a bell crank lever (20) secured to said suction head, an actuator (19) connected between said slide (12) and one arm of said bell crank lever, a guide pin (21) on one side of the other arm of said bell crank lever, and means on said slide forming a guide slot (22) for said guide pin, said slot being partly straight and partly curved for guiding said suction head in its displacing and tilting actions, respectively.
 3. In a sheet glass handling machine, an apparatus for removing glass sheets one by one from a pack of glass sheets without interleaving means between the sheets, said apparatus comprising a suction head (16) movably mounted on a frame (1) and having at least three suction cups (18,18a) positioned triangularly in a common plane, means (9, 15) for reciprocating said suction head towards and away from a glass sheet pack (25) to remove the glass sheets one by one adhered to its suction cups, means (19-23) for moving said suction head parallel to the glass sheet side plane and tilting it through a small angle, thereby displacing one adhered sheet (24) in its own plane and spacing one edge thereof from the next sheet of the pack, abutment means (36) movably mounted on said frame and biased for abutting the glass sheet pack at said edge, and air nozzle means (30) carried by said abutting means in position to expel a blast of compressEd air between said edge and said next glass sheet.
 4. In a machine having a movable suction head (16) for removing glass sheets one by one from a pack (25) positioned at the machine and consisting of glass sheets in direct contact with each other, means (19-23) for moving said suction head with the outermost glass sheet of said pack adhered thereto parallel to the main plane of said sheet, thereby displacing said sheet and uncovering an edge portion of the next sheet of said pack at one edge of said outermost sheet, and for tilting said suction head about an axis parallel with said main plane and at substantially right angles to the displacement direction, thereby detaching said edge of said outermost sheet from said next sheet, abutment means (36) movable and biased for pressing against said outermost sheet at said edge thereof and - after the displacement of said outermost sheet - against said uncovered portion of said next sheet, and a blowing nozzle (30) attached to said abutment means in position for blowing air in between said edge of said outermost sheet and said next sheet. 